The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 29 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Schwarzman: Blackstone helps underperformers find jobs rather than direct termination
“You never terminate somebody because it's not fair. In other words, they're there because you asked them to be. And so the mistake is yours, right?”
Schwarzman: True entrepreneurs hate taking risks and only bet on sure things
“Entrepreneurs don't really like taking risk. People who write about them and report on them think they're taking risk, but the person who's actually betting their life really thinks it's going to work, or else why would you bet your life?”
Schwarzman: Hilton buyout made $12B, the largest profit in PE history
“And that deal turned out to be the biggest profit in private equity history. And I just read some articles somebody wrote which makes you wonder who said we were completely irresponsible doing that because journalists can say anything they feel like. But that …”
Schwarzman: Blackstone's investing makes about double the stock market
“We've just become more popular because the type of investing we do makes about double the stock market.”
Schwarzman: Lehman's 1984 sale was triggered by trading limit breaches and rate losses
“People in the trading department exceeded limits on certain type of security, and it ended up that interest rates went the wrong way, and, you know, we lost doubly on the trade, and the impact of that on a mark-to-market basis would have gotten close to wiping…”
Schwarzman: Debt risk comes from refinancing maturities during downturns, not interest service
“The first rule is never meet a maturity. So if you're borrowing money, you can almost always pay the interest. In almost every case, you analyze it and you see how bad You know, the company performed in previous recessions, and then you take a discount from th…”
Schwarzman: Executives are usually better when older than in their thirties
“That's why when you're older, you're usually a better executive than, you know, when you're in your thirties.”
Schwarzman: '10' executives can play all positions and build enormous businesses
“There are just Some people who have that sixth sense of what's going on in, in their area, they can sense danger, they can see opportunity, they know how to hire people, they inspire loyalty, they tend to be really nice people as a rule, and they can build eno…”
Schwarzman: '9' executives execute reliably but are not franchise-determinative
“A nine is, like, really good person. They can execute anything. They're clever. They're hardworking. They're reliable. You can put them in charge of something where you describe the situation, and they can pretty much bring it home without, you know, coaching,…”
Schwarzman: Legal constraints pass bad employees around by prohibiting candid references
“And sometimes bad apples just get passed around because the legal system says you can't tell the truth about them.”
Schwarzman: Blackstone would have been buried holding all EOP assets
“If we had held all of it, we probably would have been buried.”
Schwarzman: Real estate supply is 100% visible and takes three years to build
“So the lovely thing about real estate, it's the slowest moving asset class you could ever find. Because supply takes around three years to manifest itself, and a hundred percent of supply is visible because you can't build anything without filing for permits, …”
Schwarzman: Integrated systems fail unless every component is properly coordinated
“Every course they were taking was teaching the same thing. They said it had different names, you know, strategy, production, human relations, marketing, but it was all the same thing, which is that every piece of any integrated system has to be coordinated or …”
Schwarzman: Modern analysts appreciate data less due to instant data generation
“I think it probably makes you appreciate data less. Someone who was trained in my era, you know, every slight nuance in a number is multiplied because you had to fight to produce any number. So you felt everything viscerally, and now you can just look at it on…”
Schwarzman: Client loyalty belongs mostly to the institution, not individual talent
“When you leave an established place, apparently that changes people's views of you. Not in terms of your capability, but maybe it's not you. Maybe it's just the firm where you're working, but for your own ego-driven reasons, you think it's you working at the f…”
Schwarzman: Blackstone raised $950M for Fund I with no investing record
“First fund's aspiration was a billion. We raised eight 50, and then went back a year later, got another hundred for money in the firm. So I looked at it, we sort of, with two people with no investment capability, raised nine hundred and fifty million dollars, …”
Schwarzman: Blackstone has almost never lost money for any bank
“We never had in our whole first fund ever lost any money for any bank. And, you know, we've almost never, in the firm's history, lost money for any bank.”
Schwarzman: 90% of Bad Investments Stem from Misjudged Known Risks
“Usually in about 90% of the cases, if something goes wrong with the investment, it's about those risk factors, and we got them wrong. The team didn't get them wrong. We all got it wrong, and so if that's the case, and the outcome is suboptimal, the team doesn'…”
Schwarzman: Management success hinges on sequencing and timing, not identifying solutions
“You knew what the right answer was, but if you went ahead and implemented that, you could blow up a whole part of your business, because other people become destabilized. So I learned that, that figuring out what to do wasn't hard, but how to do it, and what k…”
Schwarzman: Founders should only pursue big ideas because effort is equal
“So you ought to wait until you find something that's really worthy of the effort, because you're going to be making a heroic effort in any case, You should find a really big idea addressing a really big opportunity, because then if you win huge, but you also c…”
Schwarzman: Blackstone flipped $70B in real estate in one month
“So, so we bought and sold seventy billion dollars of properties in one month. The most anybody ever had sold in a year was like bought and sold 10.”
Schwarzman: Blackstone made 3.2x return on Equity Office Properties deal
“We made 3.2 times profit on, on that ten billion.”
Schwarzman: Parents never congratulated him on any accomplishments growing up
“My parents never congratulated me on anything I ever accomplished. It was just assumed that that's what you were supposed to do.”
Schwarzman: Financial firms collapse when wiped-out equity triggers lender runs
“The way financial firms work is that if you have no equity, and people have lent you money to support Your balance sheet, and they realize there's nothing underneath them, then they panic and call their loans, and everyone calls them at the same time, more or …”
Schwarzman: Blackstone launched with $400,000 and a $50,000 fee from Squibb
“I remember when we got our first assignment, that was from Squibb, which was a pharmaceutical company for 50,000 dollars, which was less than the smallest legal bill I had ever gotten on a transaction. But 50,000 dollars, we started with 400,000 total capital.…”
Schwarzman: Fear of financial ruin prevents emotional presence with family
“That it's hard to be emotionally present when you're worried about completely wiping out financially.”
Schwarzman: Blackstone received 17 rejections for every yes on Fund I
“I remember each one of the investors because we were turned down 17 times for every one yes.”
Schwarzman: Financial stocks fell 85% in 2008 crisis while Blackstone fell 90%
“The average stock of a financial company, bank, money manager, didn't matter, during the financial crisis went down 85%.
So if you've ever been involved with something that went down 85%,
You would not be a particularly happy Kemper.
Blackstone's always been a…”
Schwarzman: Top-of-cycle investing demands powerful momentum and historically safe pricing
“You always have to know where you are in the cycle, so if you're near the top, this thing's gotta really, it's got a lot to prove to deploy that money. It's gotta have a, just a rip-roaring, wonderful set of momentum thesis, so it'll power through a downturn, …”